The present invention relates to communication services. More specifically, the present invention relates to filtering or sorting voice, electronic text or multimedia messages stored in mailboxes according to personalized or customized rules set by the owner of each mailbox.
Electronic mailboxes are systems wherein messages between two or more parties may be communicated and stored for later retrieval by the message recipient. U.S. Pat. No. 4,932,042 issued to Baral et al., on Jun. 5, 1990 and assigned to AT&T Bell Laboratories is herein incorporated by reference. The forms of the communicated messages are virtually limitless and include audio, video, electronic text, electronic graphics and/or any combination thereof. An electronic mailbox used by a business or residence customer will collect messages of different types and of different importance to the addressee. The mailbox owners will want to know when important messages are waiting and will want to sort through and to retrieve messages by class of importance. The advent of electronic junk mail will create an intolerable situation for electronic mailboxes that do not possess filtering capabilities.
Electronic mailboxes with limited filtering capabilities are generally known. For example, some known electronic mailbox messaging services allow the addressee to maintain a list or personal directory of allowable senders' addresses. Received messages from senders whose addresses are not on the list or personal directory are screened. This type of message filtering capability, however, is very limited. The addressee cannot receive any messages, no matter how worthwhile, from any sender not listed in the personal directory. New senders can only be added to the list and have their messages received if they are known to the addressee.
Other known electronic mailbox services allow the sender to declare the priority or importance of the message when sending the message. Thus, if the sender indicates that its message is urgent, then the addressee's electronic mailbox service will play back this urgent message before non-urgent messages. This type of message filtering capability, however, does not reflect the addressee's (or mailbox owner's) priorities and can be easily abused by the sender.
European Patent EP 558 101 published on Mar. 23, 1993, discloses an electronic mailbox system that allows the addressee to prioritize messages in a limited manner based on the calling party's telephone number. Once the mailbox owner has accessed its mailbox through a personal identification number (PIN), the mailbox owner can enter the telephone numbers of known calling parties, such as a spouse or the mailbox owner's boss, to assign priority. When calling parties attempt to leave messages, their telephone numbers, identified by a network feature sometimes referred to as automatic number identification (ANI), are compared to the telephone phone numbers previously stored by the mailbox owner. In accordance with this comparison, the messages of predetermined calling parties will receive priority during message playback.
The known electronic mailboxes, however, suffer several shortcomings. Specifically, the known electronic mailboxes do not identify the specific message, but instead merely identify the telephone number from which the message originated. Thus, a high priority message will not be recognized if it originates from a location other than the sender's telephone number. This is certainly the case for voice messages. Electronic text messages can carry information in a "from" field which could identify the originator independently of the location from which the message is sent. Alternatively, a low priority message could be sent from a telephone number with a recognized, predetermined high priority; the low priority message would be filtered as a high priority message. Furthermore, the filtering capabilities of known electronic mailboxes are based on a single, fixed phone number assigned by the telephone company and identified through the ANI feature. When messages are sent from locations where ANI is not available, even this scheme is unworkable. Therefore, the known electronic mailboxes do not consider the possibility of the same caller leaving messages concerning different topics with varying priorities.
Additionally, electronic communications systems commonly allow the sender to maintain an unlisted address or phone number. With the advent of alias addresses in association with unlisted addresses or phone numbers, the sender and addressee can communicate without the addressee discovering the sender's originating address or phone number. Carriers are entrusted to use a sender's ANI for routing and billing purposes. When the ANI is an unlisted number, revealing this number to the addressee is proscribed. Therefore, using ANI as the basis for mailbox filters is problematic.